ABC's Election Analyst blogs on the wonderful world of Australian Elections.

Senate Elections

June 25, 2015

There is some wild speculation around about an early Commonwealth election, but there are several problems for the government in calling an early election.

First is the Senate. Under Section 13 of the Constitution, it is impossible to issue a writ for a half-Senate election until 1 July 2016. That means the first possible date to hold a normal House and half-Senate election is 6 August 2016, more than a year away.

The government could call a separate House election at any time by simply asking the Governor-General. A House election would also include elections for the four Territory Senators.

The Prime Minister would have to give a reason for an early House election, but given that Prime Minister Abbott continues to have the confidence of the House, the Governor-General would be highly unlikely to reject such a request.

The government would be left with one problem in calling a separate House election. A separate half-Senate election would then need to be held sometime in the next 20 months. This would mean either another House election in conjunction with the half-Senate, or the government running the risk of voters treating a separate half-Senate election as a giant by-election.

Alternatively the government could try to call a double dissolution, which is possible, but has a few problems of its own.

JSCEM's major recommendation is to abolish the existing system of party controlled preferences and instead allow voters to express their own optional preference for parties 'above the line'. It makes the related recommendation to end full preferential voting 'below the line' on the ballot paper. There are also proposals to tighten party registration rules.

Under the proposed system, a single first preference vote 'above the line' on the ballot paper would only imply preferences for the chosen party. The current ability of parties to take control of above the line votes and direct them as preferences to other parties on the ballot paper would be ended.

Voters would have a new option, to vote 1, 2, 3 etc above the line, allowing voters an easy option to direct their own preferences. Under the proposed system, the only preferences that would count are those filled in by voters themselves, the same as for House elections.

The argument for the JSCEM recommendation is to deal with the evident problems at the 2013 election. These problems were floods of parties and candidates that required reduced font sizes forcing the Electoral Commission to issue magnifying sheets with ballot papers. There were also the opaque deals on preferences that voters could not possibly assess and the consequent election of candidates from less than half a percent of the vote.

The proposed changes significantly simplify the options available to electors when voting, and make the composition of Senators elected more reflective of votes filled in by electors rather than preference deals done by candidates and parties.

The JSCEM recommendations should be assessed on whether they improve the conduct of the election, and whether they better translate the will of the electorate into representation in the Senate.

However, this is politics so there is a demand to know which parties will be advantaged or disadvantaged by the changes. Inside this post I go into great detail on how past results could have been changed under the new electoral system. In summary the finding are -

The tendency of Senate elections to produce deadlock is a consequence of switching from five to six Senators per half-Senate election in the 1980s. The change removed the possibility of a party winning a majority in its own right. While the proposed changes may have seen fewer Democrats elected in the 1990s, the tendency to Senate deadlock is a consequence of electing an even number of Senators and does not appear to be more or less likely as a result of the proposed changes.

The Coalition has done consistently better than Labor since 1990 because it has consistently polled better. That situation would continue under the proposed system if the Coalition continue to poll more strongly than Labor.

There would have been more 3:3 Labor-Coalition splits between 1990 and 2001 and fewer Democrats. The balance between Democrats, Greens and One Nation would also have been different in this period under the proposed system.

How the electoral system has interacted with the senate balance of power was fundamentally changed since the electoral disappearance of the Australian Democrats after 2001.

The major political change produced by the JSCEM recommendations would be to make it much harder for micro-parties to be elected from tiny proportions of the vote, a feature of the 2004, 2010 and 2013 Senate elections.

Assuming current voting patterns, the Greens would find themselves more likely to hold the sole balance of power. However, the new system may encourage the merging of the numerous micro-parties, raising the possibility that other minor parties could be elected.

June 22, 2015

"It may be that some people will argue that it is acceptable electoral practice to conduct elections on unwieldy and unreadable ballot papers using unknown and incomprehensible preferences between equally unknown candidates. I'm quite happy to admit I am strongly opposed to that position."

After examining the problems encountered with the conduct of the 2013 Senate election, the Commonwealth Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) has recommended major changes to the Senate's electoral system.

The JSCEM report produced an agreed set of recommendations supported by Coalition, Labor and Green members of the Committee.

The report backed retaining the existing ballot paper that allows electors to vote for parties 'above the line', or for candidates below the line.

More importantly, the recommendations alter the options available for electors in completing their Senate ballot papers. The proposal ends the ability of parties to control the preferences of above the line votes, and ends the requirement that voters give preferences for all candidates if voting below the line.

Voters would be able to vote '1' for a single party above the line, but such a vote would only have preferences for the chosen party and no longer have implied party preferences for every other candidate and party on the ballot paper. A voter would be able to express their preferences for other parties above the line by numbering 2, 3, 4 etc, with the number of preferences entirely optional. Or a voter can vote for candidates below the line with a minimum number of preferences set equal to the number of vacancies to be filled.

The proposal would put the Senate on the same footing as the House of Representatives in that the only preferences that count would be those determined by voters themselves. Parties would no longer be able to insert their way into defining the preferences of ballot papers. To achieve this, some form of optional preferential voting would have to be accepted for Senate elections.

The proposal is in most of its features the same as changes introduced in NSW in 2000 after the infamous 'tablecloth' ballot paper at the 1999 Legislative Council election. The system has been used for four NSW Legislative Council elections, the most recent being on 28 March this year.

Legislation to implement the JSCEM recommendations has yet to emerge. At the moment the common front in support of the report appears to be weakening. Power brokers in the Labor Party seem to be backpedaling away from the JSCEM recommendations, concerned at the impact a changed system might have on Labor's future prospects.

The key point of an electoral system is to translate the will of the electorate into representation in parliament. The main objection being raised to the proposed Senate electoral system is that it strengthens the ability of voters to determine Senate representation and weakens the power of party deal makers.

The most strident opposition to the JSCEM recommendation is coming from people who would rather maintain the current system where a tiny number of people responsible for lodging preference tickets have the power to re-interpret to their own ends the will of the electorate expressed on their ballot papers.

Later this week I'll return to the possible political implications of changing the Senate's electoral system. My intention with this post is to examine is how the proposed system worked in its implementation at the 2015 NSW state election.

The main lesson to be drawn from the result is that political parties are still having difficulty encouraging people to fill in preferences on their Legislative Council ballot papers.

June 10, 2015

Given problems encountered in the conduct of the 2013 Senate election, there are a number of proposals being put forward for changing the Senate's electoral system.

Before writing on those proposals, I thought it worth setting out how the Senate's electoral system reached its current level of complexity.

To borrow a metaphor from biology, the Senate's electoral system is a maladapted product of evolution rather than constructed by intelligent design. The system has come about by accretion, incorporating features added to make it consistent with voting systems in the House of Representatives, but also interacting with experience gained as the states have changed their electoral systems since the 1970s.

The most significant changes have come about less by design than as responses to electoral problems of the day. Draw for ballot groups was introduced in 1940 as a response to ballot manipulation in 1937. Proportional representation was introduced in 1949 as a response lop-sided Senate majorities and produced a massive change in the political importance of the Senate. Group ticket voting was introduced in 1984 as a response to the chronic problem of informal voting.

Now the Senate system needs to respond to problems that have arisen as parties and candidates have learnt how to operate under the rules introduced in 1984.

The 2013 election featured ballot papers with record numbers of candidates, resulting in the font size being reduced and voters being issued with magnifying sheets to read their ballot papers. The multiplicity of parties had an impact on how people voted by making it harder for voters to find the parties they did know from amongst the plethora of new political entrants. Preference tickets of fiendish complexity made it difficult for voters to know where their vote would end up if they used the group voting squares. The only alternative to avoid the preference deals was for voters to number up to 110 preferences, at some point resorting to random preferences for equally unknown candidates simply to ensure the preferences for candidates the voter did know were counted.

More than a century of change has produced the Senate electoral system that operated at the 2013 election. Understanding the evolution of the current system is a starting point for assessing any changes that should come about as a response to the 2013 election.

December 16, 2014

Labor won the last seat in Northern Victoria Region because of the formula used to calculate transfer values for the distribution of preferences from candidates who have more than a quota of votes.

The method used in Victoria, as in the Senate, is the Inclusive Grgeory method. It is an old manual counting system where, like adding water to peat moss, votes suddenly revert to their original value as ballot papers when a candidate passes a quota.

Had the Weighted Inclusive Gregory method been used, based on vote values rather than ballot papers, then Coalition preferences would have carried less weight on the election of the Shooters and Fishers Party, resulting in the Greens receiving more preferences at the next count. The result would have been Labor being excluded and the last seat being won by the Australian Country Alliance, not by Labor.

October 07, 2014

While discussing the Senate’s electoral system at political conferences last week, the existing system was defended to me by analogy with a sandwich shop.

The reasoning for this defence was about choice. Most people prefer a sandwich shop with lots of choice over a sandwich shop with minimal choice. A large ballot paper may be a draw back with the current Senate system, but it should be preferred because it offers more choice.

I think this argument is wrong on three important grounds, and I’ll explain by turning the choices offered to voters into the choices people make when ordering a sandwich.

September 12, 2014

This morning's newspapers include a story concerning the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and its intention to challenge Senator John Madigan's right to continue as a senator. Senator Madigan announced his resignation from the party last week and stated that he will continue in the Senate as an independent.

Interviewed on ABC radio yesterday, Federal DLP president Paul Funnell said that he had written to Victorian Governor Alex Chernov seeking to have Senator Madigan removed from the Upper House."We have written to the Governor [Alex] Chernov to advise the Federal Senate that we actually will be nominating a Senate delegate to fill the vacant position, ... It's our contention that the sixth Victorian Senate seat, that was won in 2010, is vacant because of the resignation."

This letter will get nowhere. If there is a Senate vacancy then the Senate will write to the Governor of the relevant state informing them of the vacancy. The Governor will pass the Senate letter to the state parliament who will begin the process of filling the vacancy.

Senator Madigan may have resigned from the DLP but he has not resigned from the Senate so no vacancy exists. No doubt this is the response the DLP will receive from the Governor.

So are there other grounds that could result in Senator Maddigan's seat being declared vacant? The DLP has indicated it will take the matter to the High Court if the Governor does not act. The DLP is quoted as having 'received legal advice' and that its challenge would concern Section 15 of the Constitution, but otherwise the party has issued no detail of its proposed challenge.

August 07, 2014

Victorian Senator Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party has been in the news this week for sacking two of his staff, Peter Breen and the so-called 'preference whisperer' Glenn Druery.

This dramatic parting of the ways comes barely a month into the six year term that Muir's party fluked after polling just 0.51% of the vote last September. The Motoring Enthusiasts Party polled 17,122 first preference at an election where the quota for election was 483,076 votes.

Muir's party has established the new benchmark of a Senator being elected from a record low party vote. Muir holds the record because the strange election of the Australian Sports Party's WayneDropulich from 0.2% at last year's WA Senate election was cancelled out by the WA Senate election re-run.

Across all Australia upper houses, only Malcolm Jones of the Outdoor Recreation Party has been elected with a lower vote. Jones was elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 1999 from only 7,264 votes or just 0.2%.

However, Muir's victory remains more remarkable as he rose from 0.51% to reach the 14.29% quota for election, where Jones achieved a lower 4.55% quota.

The link between Jones and Muir is not just their remarkable victories. There is also the fact that the two people Muir sacked last week, Glenn Druery and Peter Breen, were on the famous 1999 tablecloth ballot paper from which Jones emerged victorious.

July 04, 2014

Several weeks ago Green's Leader Senator Christine Milne announced that her party had delivered the Abbott government a trigger for a double dissolution by helping to block, for a second time, legislation to repeal the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

While it is true blocking the legislation created a double dissolution trigger, is is unlikely that the Prime Minister yet has constitutional justification to request double dissolution. That is assuming he was of a mind to do so.

An overlooked aspect of calling a double dissolution, and an aspect that tripped up Malcolm Fraser in 1983, is that while possession of a trigger is necessary for calling a double dissolution, on its own a trigger is not a sufficient reason.

This necessary but not sufficient condition relating to double dissolution triggers goes back to legal advice at the time of the first double dissolution one hundred years ago this month in 1914.

June 30, 2014

Australian State Senators are elected to fixed but staggered six year terms, with half of each state's Senators facing the electorate every three years.

Currently the Senate has 76 Senators, each state represented by 12 Senators broken into two rotations of six, plus two Senators from each of the Territories.

Terms of State Senators are fixed, and Section 13 of the Constitution specifies that an election for new Senators can only be held in the last twelve months of a Senate's term.

It is the Senate's fixed term that is the main impediments to Australian Prime Ministers calling early elections, unless they want to run the risk of House and Senate elections getting out of step.

The only method of breaking the Senate's fixed term is through a double dissolution, the constitutional deadlock resolution method that sends all of the Senate to an election at once.

After a double dissolution, the rotation of terms has to be re-established, all Senators being allocated to either a long or a short term.

Many times I've been asked what mechanism is used to allocate new Senators to short and long terms.

In this post I will outline the method the Senate has used in the past. I will also outline a fairer method that is provided for in the Electoral Act, a method ignored by the Senate when it last met after a double dissolution in 1987.